At the end of last year JAMA Internal Medicine published a study that showed that the authors of two highly influential papers published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1967 had undisclosed but important conflicts of interest. The two review papers demolished the idea that sugar might be important in coronary heart disease […]
Assessment is a core component of medical education. Medical students must undergo continual examinations. Postgraduate trainees must pass their annual assessments. And fully qualified doctors must overcome the twin hurdles of appraisal and revalidation. Exams are like death and taxes—you can’t avoid them. Is there anything good to say about exams? Probably only that they […]
If this seems like a silly season Twitter spat, it isn’t. It’s deadly serious […]
Much to my amusement and countering the stereotype of surgeons, the Annals of Surgery has “following an uproar” retracted a paper that used only male pronouns to describe surgeons. It’s counter to the stereotype of surgeons because they still are overwhelming male and, in our imaginations if not reality, casually sexist. But there are an increasing number […]
As I discussed last week, Paul Meehl showed, in 1954, in a book called Clinical Versus Statistical Prediction: A Theoretical Analysis and a Review of the Evidence, that various algorithms performed as well as clinical predictions, although he didn’t use the word “algorithm”. He had been stimulated to investigate this question by a paper in […]
We need a new way of working, argues Matt Morgan […]
Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī (ca 780-850; picture) was a Persian mathematician, astronomer, and geographer who lived during the Caliphate of the Abbasids, a dynasty that ruled in Baghdad from 750 to 1258, one of whom, Caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd (ca 763-809), features prominently in the Tales of 1001 Nights. Al-Khwārizmī’s work has given us two mathematical […]
We should accept that humanity is dying and switch from cure to palliation—just as wise patients do at the end of their lives. This is the core of an argument from Alex Jadad, a palliative care physician and magician, and Murray Enkin, a retired obstetrician in his 90s who has just survived a major heart attack […]
Earlier this week, the media delightedly reported that Jacob Rees-Moggs had referred to floccinaucinihilipilification in a parliamentary speech. It comes from Latin: floccus, a wisp of wool, naucum, a trifle, nihil, nothing, and pilus, a hair, words that belittle whatever they are referring to. The word is not new. The Oxford English Dictionary finds it […]
The reality of fewer psychiatrists is a problem that is not going to go away […]